


Imporvement

by Ocellotte



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Dsytopian AU, Dystopia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-10 23:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4411385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ocellotte/pseuds/Ocellotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had to expand the movie industry /somehow./</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imporvement

Jake hurried down the corridor, clutching the unmarked case in his hand. The voices were back again. They told him things, like how his hands were too sweaty and he would drop the case and break the precious disc. Like how he hadn’t always liked the camera work, but he had let it slide and put the shots in anyways. How he was sure that his drawing the short straw hadn’t been by chance. He took a deep breath and hurried on.

He turned just short of the screening room and went up a small staircase to the side. It was a small theater, private, so they didn’t have to hide things like that for the impression of the general audience. He made sure, under the sharp glares of the guards, to put the disc in _before_ he started up the projector. This was only the second time he’d had to do this, but he learned fast. There was a slight hum as the projector warmed up, but then the light shined through the lens and Jake could breathe again, because it was out of his hands now.

He sat by the machine for no less than three and a half hours, watching his movie play its course along with the inhabitants of the theater. He had not cut corners on time. That would be death. He winced at his mistakes and fidgeted slightly less at his successes, sometimes barely managing to hold in his whimpers and winces, something the guards seemed to have no problem with. He had no food, no water, no games to distract himself from _him_. It was all he could do not to scream.

Finally, _finally_ , it was over. It was out of his hands, it was out of his hands. He couldn’t influence anything! The Judge didn’t seem to have ears - and if it did, it was long-practiced at ignoring the pleading of its victims, anyways. (Thank the gods it had been trained out of that particular habit, or Jake would be embarrassing himself right now.)

Jake carefully put the CD back in its case, letting the heat field seal the breach his hands had left, then hurriedly left the room as quietly as possible. He was not to disturb the Judge. Sometimes, he imagined what it looked like, what sort of sounds it made, and how it expressed its opinion...

He supposed that was the scary thing about the Judge, though. No one knew anything about it - them? Was it a person? -  except the Sacred Guild, and no one knew anything about Them either. The tinted windows of their sleek, shiny headquarters hid their secrets, which their underground base was not one of. No one knew where they had found the Judge, or even why they were here. But oh well, though. It was out of his hands. It didn’t matter if he quietly thought that the Judge shouldn’t express its opinions by how many of its slaves it left alive that day. No one would care if he believed that the underground base and the sleek, shiny headquarters meant nothing, and were just ruses, possibly, to divert attention from their true origin. No one would notice if, perhaps, he believed that the human race didn’t deserve to be oppressed and enslaved. And if he was lucky, no one would notice-

 **Bang**!

Jake turned around as the door flew open. As he saw the thing that stood before him, he knelt in fear, trembling at its feet.

_“YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD FOOL US,” it whispered to him. “YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD PROMOTE YOUR SILLY IDEALS AND REVOLT AGAINST US WITHOUT BEING NOTICED? YOU THOUGHT WE WOULDN’T SQUISH YOU LIKE A PUNY EARTH INSECT?” Its voice was painfully quiet in that way that makes you want to scream and run away, but you know that if you do, you will die even more certainly before. It was the type of quiet that you should be straining to hear, but every syllable falls heavy on your eardrum. And the Judge knew it. It watched - what was his name? - Jake cower on the floor in fear._

_“Wh-what are you going to do with me?” He whimpered, his nose almost touching the ground. The Judge laughed. It was just like these people to assume the worst of his kind. That assumption, naturally, would not help him through the first few days, but he would get over it. They all did._

_“YOU’RE GOING WITH THEM.” The squad appeared silently behind Jake, smooth as glass. “DON’T EVEN IMAGINE ESCAPE. IT WILL ONLY BECOME ANOTHER CRUSHED HOPE OF YOURS, IN TIME."_

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I wrote a while ago, like, two years. The title is a working title, and there's pretty much /no/ plot. All I've done so far is cleaned it up a bit, added details, removed a few other details, and yet here I am posting it.
> 
> This is a gutsy move on my part, guys! I don't know where this thing is going, if it's really going anywhere, whether I'll post more, what my endgame goals are, /nothing/. Just... let me know if you like it and don't depend on it being consistently good, alright?
> 
> (the title will probably change, as will the tags, characters, relationships, so on. Stick with it for a while, see what you get.)


End file.
